- Network: Comedy Central
- Series Premiere Date: Jan 19, 2015
Season #: 2, 1
Critic Reviews
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Wilmore proves a smart and capable host in his auspicious debut.
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Wilmore’s approach was pointed (as pointed as a sharp stick) and often funny. Most of all, he brought a perspective to late-night TV--as the basis for entire nightly comedy show--that's been missing from late-night TV for just about as long as late-night TV has been around.
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Although there were rough patches, The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore planted its own flag with Monday night’s premiere and is a solid addition to the late-night stew.
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It's still a little clunky, particularly in terms of editing, and it feels as if all involved are figuring out the right ratio of jokes to information. Yet there's a lot to recommend here.
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Comedy Central appears to have come up with a worthy partner to “The Daily Show,” with Stewart and Wilmore as the salt and pepper shakers of late-night TV. A half-hour of humor, opinion, issues, and conversation, The Nightly Show has the potential to resonate as it evolves in the coming months.
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Wilmore was off to a good start Monday night--a little muted, which is his style anyway, and a little tentative, as would be expected. But he landed some punches and clearly had more than a little fun.
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The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore isn’t perfect, and it might not find its stride for a few weeks yet. But with this first episode, Wilmore and his team are demonstrating that they are not afraid of asking hard questions, whether those questions are about police brutality, representation in film, biracial identity, or how and when women feel safe in public. It takes a lot of skill to boil a complicated issue down to a single question; it takes even more to make that question funny.
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He’s got some work to do in the pacing of the table discussions, but Wilmore’s sensibility is immediately relatable: common sense enlivened by a healthy dissatisfaction with the status quo.
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An unsteady but very likable debut. ... That's about as good as anyone can expect from a talk show that debuted on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and that's going to spend the next few weeks or months perfecting itself while shouldering the burden of immense and mostly unreasonable expectations.
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As you'd expect from a new late-night show, parts of it worked better than others, and no doubt tweaks will be forthcoming. But overall, Monday's opening outing got Wilmore off to a solid start. ... It helps immensely that, in his first night, Wilmore already seemed completely comfortable as the show's host.
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As for first impressions, I liked it. ... Slight nitpicking should not obscure the fact that overall Wilmore was funny; his show was smart and thoughtful, has a bright future and seems an excellent fit with Stewart and the Comedy Central brand.
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With the necessary caveat that it’s fruitless to “review” a late-night show after one night ... [the panel discussion] is the segment that will need the most work. ... Maybe the most important first impression from a talk show’s first night is simply point-of-view: does the show know what it is, and why it is? Here The Nightly Show really has something going for it.
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Like Stewart, Wilmore is good at using jokes to cut down overblown public figures, and he isn’t afraid to be self-deprecating. His opening monologue is typically the best part of the show.... The shakiest part of the show during its first week has been the middle panel-discussion segment, which features a mix of comedians and political commentators talking about the episode’s topic.
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Wilmore had a few bugs in his performance on opening night: He was a little too giggly, and a few times he spokesofast it turned his lines into what-did-he-say? mush. That said, his clear excitement for this opportunity was endearing.
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The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore got off to a promising if uneven start Monday on Comedy Central, with Wilmore's opening segment much stronger than a chaotic panel discussion that followed.
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While the program as a whole has room to grow, Wilmore's comedy is sharp, solid and filled with keen observations and strong enough to have earned him the distinction of being the only high-profile black voice in late night television.
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Wilmore exhibited a quickness and light touch about sensitive topics, yet struggled to bring much coherence or flow to the overpopulated discussion that took up most of the premiere. The unknowns, at this point, outnumber the knowns, making an unqualified tip of the hat premature.
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Jan 20, 2015He started off with a strong opening monologue.... But the heart of the show is supposed to be a panel discussion between Wilmore, one of his contributors and a guest panel that Monday night featured U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, hip-hop artist Talib Kweli and comedian Bill Burr, but eight minutes wasn't enough time to get any sort of meaningful (or funny, for that matter) dialogue going.... What did work was the "Keep It 100" segment, in which Wilmore posed a tough question tailored to each of his panelists, which they had to answer as truthfully as possible.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 43 out of 200
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Mixed: 16 out of 200
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Negative: 141 out of 200
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Mar 11, 2015
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Mar 31, 2015
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Feb 16, 2015